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Leadership Battle Grips South Africa’s Dominant Party

Four thousand delegates gathered Sunday in Polokwane, South Africa, for the annual meeting of the African National Congress.Credit
Denis Farrell/Associated Press

POLOKWANE, South Africa — In South Africa, the African National Congress is the unchallenged political machine, the party’s leader is its kingmaker and the conference to select that person, which began Sunday, is not unlike an American presidential primary.

But even at its quirkiest, American presidential politics has seldom been like this. More telling, never has South Africa’s.

The A.N.C., as the African National Congress is known, faced an unprecedented, caustic and potentially crippling leadership struggle as its 4,000 delegates gathered for their annual meeting in Polokwane, a rural college town north of the administrative capital, Pretoria.

On one side is Thabo Mbeki, the president not only of the A.N.C. but also of South Africa itself. Mr. Mbeki wants to keep his party job so he can influence who succeeds him as national president when his term ends in 2009.

On the other side is Jacob Zuma, once Mr. Mbeki’s deputy president and now an implacable rival. Mr. Zuma wants the party presidency because, in normal times, it is a stepping-stone to the national presidency.

In postapartheid South African politics, however, these are not normal times. Never have such polar opposites vied for power. Mr. Mbeki, the distant, pipe-puffing, capitalist intellectual, was schooled in British universities during exile under apartheid. Mr. Zuma, a rough-edged, unschooled and occasionally socialist populist whose scant education was gained in an apartheid prison, is as charismatic as Mr. Mbeki is cold.

The results of the delegates’ leadership balloting for president and other party offices could be announced as early as Monday, officials said. But challenges to the method of voting and other procedures, many made by Mr. Zuma’s supporters, may stall the process.

This could be a watershed choice in more ways than personality. Mr. Mbeki’s conservative economics have built South Africa into the continent’s fiscal powerhouse, but critics say his policies have created a handful of billionaires while leaving millions of poor behind. Mr. Zuma has embraced the socialists and communists, who want to redistribute wealth to the impoverished, and is said to have privately assured financiers that he is a fiscal moderate.

Mr. Mbeki has brokered peace accords in parts of Africa, gaining something of a reputation as a diplomat, but is accused of coddling authoritarians like President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Mr. Zuma says Mr. Mbeki’s government has been soft on dictators, pointing toward a shift in foreign policy on rights issues.

Mr. Mbeki takes a hard line against corruption, but his administration has been riddled by bribery investigations. Mr. Zuma, meanwhile, is himself the target of a bribery investigation, involving payoffs for military contracts, but he suggests that Mr. Mbeki’s minions dredged up the charges to weaken his popularity.

Mr. Mbeki’s legacy is tarnished by a long history of failing to address South Africa’s AIDS pandemic. Mr. Zuma says he wants a war on AIDS — but not long ago drew ridicule for saying he avoided H.I.V. infection by taking a shower after sex.

Mr. Mbeki’s supporters cast him as the protector of South African democracy against demagogy and other “destructive elements.” Mr. Zuma’s supporters say he is the democrat, shattering a political system that has mostly excluded the public from the leadership process.

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In fact, the two men’s public rivalry is by itself revolutionary for the A.N.C., which during its 55 years has groomed future rulers in back rooms and announced them to the world with an almost obsessive emphasis on unity. This time, unity is getting little more than lip service.

In Johannesburg last week, Mr. Zuma observed International Human Rights Day by assailing leaders who abuse judicial proceedings for political gain — an ill-concealed reference to his own status as a prosecutors’ target. “History is dotted with the legacy of tyrants who abused the rights of citizens in order to usurp or hold on to power,” he said.

Mr. Mbeki has publicly warned that divisions in the governing party threaten to tear it apart, and insisted in a rare newspaper interview last week that he had never tried to block Mr. Zuma’s rise. But on Sunday, Mr. Mbeki’s two-and-one-half-hour keynote speech to the party’s conference dwelled heavily on political corruption, a virus that he warned is wreaking “repulsive” damage on the A.N.C.

Mr. Zuma’s financial adviser has already been convicted of shunting more than 1.2 million rand — about $175,000 — in bribes to Mr. Zuma to help a French arms maker win government military contracts. Mr. Zuma was later charged with corruption, but legal technicalities scotched the trial.

As the party conference began Sunday, prosecutors filed court papers asserting that Mr. Zuma had not only taken an additional $420,000 in bribes, but had also not reported the money on tax returns. The filing suggests that prosecutors are preparing to reinstate charges against Mr. Zuma, raising the prospect that the A.N.C.’s new president and South Africa’s prospective leader could rule under a cloud of felony accusations.

Mr. Mbeki controls the party’s levers of power, and many public figures are aligned against Mr. Zuma. On Friday, Desmond Tutu, the Nobel prize winner, human rights advocate and former Cape Town archbishop, urged delegates to vote against Mr. Zuma, saying that they “should not choose someone of whom most of us would be ashamed.”

That apparently referred to Mr. Zuma’s recent trial on charges that he raped the H.I.V.-positive daughter of a family friend. Mr. Zuma, who said the sex was consensual, was acquitted, but not before drawing scorn for his remarks on showering after sex.

Despite that, Mr. Zuma appears to have the edge over Mr. Mbeki. Recent polls of A.N.C. delegates showed him with a sizable lead in the race for party president, partly reflecting unhappiness with Mr. Mbeki’s tendency to shut out lower-level party officials from policy decisions.

At a reception at Polokwane’s airport on Saturday, delegates and hangers-on swamped Mr. Zuma, asking for photographs and interviews, while Mr. Mbeki left after 15 minutes of handshakes. As the conference opened Sunday in a hall at the University of Limpopo, Mr. Zuma’s raucous supporters ignored an official ban on partisan demonstrations to chant slogans and sing songs, including Mr. Zuma’s liberation-era theme music, a ditty called “Bring Me My Machine Gun.”

The display drowned out efforts by the party’s chairman, a supporter of Mr. Mbeki, to bring order. Mr. Mbeki and Mr. Zuma, who sat nearby watching, said nothing.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Leadership Battle Grips South Africa’s Dominant Party. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe